Complaints Policy

Our complaints policy

We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients. When something goes wrong we need you to tell us about it. This will help us to improve our standards.

Our complaints procedure

If you have a complaint, please contact Simon Cutting, Managing Partner. You can contact him at:

21 Southernhay East
Exeter
EX1 1QQ
Tel: 01392 285000
E-mail: s.cutting@dunnandbaker.co.uk

What will happen next?

1. You will receive a letter acknowledging your complaint and asking you to confirm or explain any of the details given, and the name of the person who will be dealing with your complaint. You can expect to receive our letter within two working days of us receiving your complaint.

2. We will record your complaint in our Central Register and open a file for your complaint. We will do this within one working day of receiving your complaint.

3. We will then start to investigate your complaint. This will involve one or more of the following steps:

3a. We will ask the member of staff who acted for you, or their Head of Department, to report back to the Complaints Partner within five working days.

3b. We will examine their reply and the information in your complaint file. We may then ask them for more information. This will take up to three working days from receiving their reply and the file. 

4. Situation dependent, we may then invite you to meet Simon Cutting to discuss and hopefully, resolve your complaint. We will do this within three working days of receiving all the details we need from the member of staff who acted for you, but at the latest within fourteen working days of receipt of your complaint.

5. Within two working days of the meeting, we will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions we have agreed with you. If you do not want a meeting, or it is not possible, we will send you a detailed reply to your complaint. This will include our suggestions for resolving the matter. This will happen within five working days of us completing our investigation, or, at the latest, within fourteen working days of receipt of your complaint.

6. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied you can contact us again. We will then arrange for a Partner in the firm who has not been involved in your complaint to review it. This will be done within ten working days.

7. We will let you know the result of the review within fourteen working days of the end of the review. At this time, we will write to you confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact the Legal Ombudsman about your complaint. You can contact them on telephone number 0300 555 0333 or alternatively at their website www.legalombudsman.org.uk

Whatever you decide, we will let you have the relevant contact information.
Please note:

8. If we have to change any of the timescales above, we will let you know and explain why.

9. The Legal Ombudsman investigates problems about poor service from lawyers. Their time limits for investigating complaints are:

9a. Within six months of receiving a final response to your complaint; and

9b. Six years from the date of act/omission; or

9c. Three years from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint (if the act took place more than six years ago).

The act or omission, or when you should have reasonably known there was cause for complaint, must have been after 5 October 2010.

• You are entitled to complain about your invoice and there may also be a right to object to a bill by applying to the court for an assessment of the bill under Part III of the Solicitors Act 1974. The Legal Ombudsman may not consider a complaint about a bill if you have applied to the court for assessment of the bill.
• Please note that if all or part of a bill remains unpaid we may be entitled to charge interest.

To view the full Terms & Conditions in .pdf format Click here to download.